Thomas Colosi, a Senior Associate with IDRS since it’s inception in 1990. He is a professional mediator, negotiator, and trainer of national and international renown with a specialization in labor management relations.  

Mr. Colosi is also known as one of the nation’s foremost experts on labor management relations, both in the public and private sectors. Mr. Colosi gained familiarity with both management and labor perspectives by serving as corporate director of employee relations with Spaulding Firebird Company and it’s parent company, Monogram Industries of Los Angeles, California, and by serving as a representative with District 50 of the United Mine Workers of America.

Early in his career, Mr. Colosi served as the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service’s Commissioner of Mediation. He also served for ten years as the Secretariat of the Public Employee Relations Board in Prince George County, Maryland. In addition, he served, for the past ten years, as the principle trainer for the Training Academy of the National Association of Labor Relations Agencies training members of public employee relation’s boards throughout the country.

Mr. Colosi played a leading role in the American Arbitration Association for almost twenty years. He served as the Vice President of the AAA Office of National Affairs in Washington D.C. from 1980-1997. From 1997-1999, he was the National Director of AAA’s Training and Education Program. He provided training to countless federal agencies including U.S. Department of State, U.S. Department of Transportation, EPA, Administrative Office of the Courts, Federal Aviation Administration, the National Aeronautics and Space Admin. U.S. Department of Energy, U.S Department of Justice and various branches of the Department of Defense and the U.S. Coast Guard. Mr. Colosi also trained people in government in Kuala Lumpar, Sri Lanka, South Africa and more recently in Czechoslovakia and Poland.

In addition to being known as an unusually effective and successful practitioner in both the public and private sector, he has had an important role in some of the more famous disputes in Indian Country. This includes serving as a mediator in the dispute at Wounded Knee in South Dakota, and in several high visible disputes in Mohawk country in up-state New York. Very recently, Mr. Colosi successfully mediated a long-standing dispute between the Red Lake Band of the Chippewa Tribe in Minnesota and the U.S. It resulted in an award of over $125 million to the Tribe.

Mr. Colosi is the author of three major books on aspects of dispute resolution. He has written: Collective Bargaining: How it Works and Why?, Fundamentals of Negotiation: A Guide To Environmental Professionals, and On and Off the Record: Colosi On Negotiation (first and second editions). These three books plus numerous published articles draw on over thirty-nine years of experience settling disputes in the work place, in public agencies, in private institutions and Indian Country.